Jim Panttaja

We have met a man several days in our hotel breakfast room. He is a grandfather, and was surprised that we had our grandchildren with us. He views this as a place for adults. Thursday was one of our days for the kids. There are lot’s of things for our kids to do, but the highlight is taking them to my sister-in-law’s ranch.

We take turns babysitting the girls during the plays. The time may be spent swimming (difficult this year because the 19 month old is not big on swimming), swinging and climbing at the playground, walking the labyrinth, having ice cream, and sleeping. And they certainly enjoy meals with us (often lunch in the park with everyone picking up their favorites on the way. If there are bits of rice – or whatever – dropped on the lawn, it doesn’t matter). And in the evening the green show. With the green show, they get a feeling of performance. If the music is lively, they may dance. And there is usually some snack while sitting on the lawn.

In the morning there is a breakfast room at our Inn. That allows us to slowly gather as different waves of people wake up, and have something available for the girls as soon as they need something. Sometimes they are early risers, other times, the last (ok – almost the last) to arrive. All in all, the girls are entertained, and throughout the week get quality time with aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. It is fun watching the different way that they interact with familiar people other than their parents (and for that matter fun to watch how they interact with their parents).

Ah – but back to the ranch. Melinda has horses, dogs, cats, goats, cows, deer, chickens, turkeys, doves and a camel (I am sure I missing something). There is always a walking tour – this year we arrived at feeding time (perhaps it is always feeding time), and my older granddaughter got to ride on Hank. Hank is 30, and used to be my horse.

But we did come here for the theater. We only had one play on Thursday. We saw Comedy of Errors. I view Comedy of Errors as  a diversion. It is about two sets of twins, separated soon after birth, searching for each other. They end up in the same far off town (in this case, in the old west).There is confusion as they are taken for each other. In the end it all works out (I hope I didn’t ruin that for you).

This is a great company of actors. I have mentioned this before, but having the depth of actors to populate an entire play with actors of this caliber is incredible. This acting was good, the physical bits were brilliant (sliding down stairs, use of a lariat, well timed chases). Though the placement of this is the old west was entertaining, it wasn’t totally satisfying. Some of the humor was not amusing. I have never been a fan of fat jokes, and this production was full of them. But the play is a diversion, and this production filled that role.

I remember very well reading and studying Our Town when I was in high school. I hated it. Nothing happened. There was this narrator on stage telling me the story. The speeches didn’t feel like anything people would actually say. So, I was not looking forward to this production. Then I read the director’s (Chay Yew) comments on the production. He also wasn’t impressed with it when he read it in high school. But was excited to be directing it. So I went in open minded (mostly).There were many things that helped me to like this production. I now have a better sense of theater history (The play was written in 1937 and won a Pulitzer). The use of a ‘chorus’ has been a tradition in the theater forever, but this chorus is a bit different. The stage manager is creating the play, not just commenting on it. I now understand that distinction. The company provides an incredible pool of actors, which allowed the town drunk to be played by Dan Donohoe, who was Iago the night before. The cast in this production was phenomenal. And Anthony Heald was great as the stage manager.I now have a better sense of Thornton Wilder (I haven’t read all of his writings, but have read a couple of his books). I think Our Town was not a great introduction for a high school student to Wilder – but two of his books were written after I studied Our Town in high school. I now know about New England. When I was in high school, I had once been out of California to Nevada. I have now been to New England many times on business and vacation, and lived close by in Poughkeepsie New York for three years. The sense of history – especially in the graveyard – is hard (though not impossible) to find in California. That New England sense of history is important to the details (though not the substance) of this play.We went to a talk by one of the actors before the play. The actor who was supposed to be there forgot, and they literally dragged in an actor off the street. Dan Haley is in his second year at the festival. He is from Idaho (and knows my cousin Dean Panttaja who is chairman of the theatre department at University of Idaho). In response to a question about a previous years play, he observed that the director has to be careful with their decisions. They certainly need to be creative – and present their message (within the context of the playwrights message). But the director also has to be aware of the impact on the audience. In this production, the two lead children didn’t work for me. I am sure that they presented what the director was looking for, but I was taken out of the play by their performances.  The young woman spoke with a lilting indian accent. The young man seemed much older than the character (though of course they were in a ‘play’ directed by the stage manager).  The performances were fine – but for a moment, I was taken out of the play.I won’t claim to ‘understand’ Our Town, but I did understand enough to have enjoyed some conversations with my family afterward. 

We have again traveled to Ashland for our annual visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We arrived Tuesday and saw our first two plays: Othello and Coriolanus. The first day notwithstanding, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is not ONLY about Shakespeare. Of our 9 plays this year (yes, 9), four are Shakespeare. It is opening week (for the summer season) this week, so there is extra buzz in Ashland. The Green Show has changed this year – last night was an enthusiastic group playing Marimbas, with music of Zimbabwe.  Later this week the schedule says that the period dancers and musicians that were here until about eight years ago are returning (some of the musicians have been here all along – but no longer playing period instruments). I am looking forward to that. Coriolanus is a timely play of a man groomed to be a soldier, who is unable to transform in to a politician. Reviews of the play often characterize him as being unsympathetic to readers or reviewers, but this production did give me a connection to, and sympathy for Coriolanus. It was staged in the New Theatre, in the round. The stage was spare – but the features they had (including a couple of trap doors) were used effectively. Coriolanus was clearly shaped by his mother to be a soldier (she made it clear that the honor might be greater if he failed to return from battle. But ultimately it was her appeal that led him to pardon Rome, and ultimately led to his death. I was in the action – literally. I was on an aisle – several times there were soldiers or townspeople on the steps next to me. We had coffee with one of the actors (who in fact had been standing next to me on the stairs), and he said that they had trouble with some of the student groups reaching out and touching actors.The scene changes were quite effective. There was little to move around – and several of them took the lights down, and immediately brought them up in another section of the theatre. There was not time to relax, you were instantly taken to the next scene. It brought more life to the action of mob scenes and battle scenes. Coriolanus is killed in the last scene (I hope I didn’t ruin that for you).   As the lights come up and the actors gather themselves for the curtain call (with no curtain to allow a delay to gather yourself), the actress who played Coriolanus’ mother (Robynn Rodriquez) checks on the actor who played Coriolanus (Danforth Comins). It feels like a quick look to make sure the actor is ok. He takes an extra second, then looks up and winks at her. Coriolanus is gone for the day, and he is back.Coriolanus focused on the manipulator (Coriolanus who was created by his mother, and plays out his role). Othello is about the manipulator, Iago.It is his play, and the play unfolds exactly to his plan. Again, a spare stage used effectively.I was realizing how much the festival has shaped my view of the theatre. Over the last 20 years I have seen about 120 plays here. Although I have seen plays in other venues (six years at Cal with Mary a theatre major, living in Poughkeepsie, and getting to Broadway on occasion, our daughter’s high school years with her in several plays, several years of Mary being on the Sixth Street Playhouse board of directors…), this does represent a huge percentage of my theatre experience. It has created my expectations of theater. It makes it easy to bring our family back year after year.

Every night is special at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It may be a preview, an opening, there is an understudy performing, it is raining in the outdoor theater, and so on. Last night was the closing night of the Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire, Rabbit Hole.

I had been warned that this was a three hankie play. I don’t want to say too much about the play itself, because I think it is best viewed not knowing exactly where it is going. My daughter’s boyfriend, Tom had seen the play before and said that this play is best viewed the first time (though he liked this production).

In Illuminations (a publication of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), there is an interview with David Lindsay-Abaire where he says that when he was at Julliard, he was told to write about the thing that most frightens him. The play is about a family coping (and not coping) with the death of a child. He (and this production) create for us the very different and very real lives that this incident created for each of the people around the child. Each person is coping in their own way. Each is affected in a different way. And they can’t (and fortunately don’t have to) play out their part alone. I think that is why I didn’t find myself reaching for my hankie (though there were certainly tears several times). Everyone realized that they couldn’t work through their pain by themselves – and couldn’t work through it only in way they wanted to.

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One of the things that I found special about the evening, was that even though is was closing night for this play, there was nothing about the performance that felt out of the ordinary. It was probably like the many other performances of the four months of this show. Except I think I noticed Bill Geisslinger take an extra look around the stage before he walked off after the curtain call.

We have seen several of August Wilson’s cycle of ten plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Gem of the Ocean is chronologically the first – set it 1904. The first that we saw in Ashland was Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in 1993. These have always been strong productions, and last night’s stood out among those productions.

At the curtain, two of the actors were especially affected by their own performance. Shona Tucker (Black Mary), who had just made the transition that set her on the path to carry the legacy of spiritual advisor, disowns her brother. You could see the emotion on her face, and on her body as she took her bow.

Kevin Kenerly (Citizen Barlow) has also just taken on a legacy. He has picked up the coat, hat and stick of Solly Two Kings who has just been killed. During the play, Kennerly was stooped by his internal pain. After the play you could see that he was stooped with emotion.

These two actors – along with the rest of the company – pulled me in to this time and this world. They helped me know and feel the pain of this heritage, and this era.

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Thai Pepper continues to be my favorite restaurant in Ashland (though the week is young – who knows what we might find). Few restaurant’s in Ashland can handle a party of 17 smoothly. Of course we helped – Mary placed our order when we made the reservation (It is tricky accommodating a variety of diet restrictions) – and we made the reservation for 5:30 – getting us easily to the Green Show at 7:15. We also save time at dinner because there are options for around town while we walk back to the theatre.

This is our 20th year visiting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. We have arrived [see Mary's post: Summer Theatre Begins], and now seen our first play (some of us saw The Tempest, and others As You Like It).

For our four year old granddaughter, this is her fifth year at the festival. We wore her out yesterday running and swimming. As we waited for dinner, she asked to sit on my lap. Two minutes later, it was clear she was going to sleep through dinner. I was able to lay her down next to me so I could eat my dinner. As we finished dinner, she woke from her well planned nap (woke enough so that I could carry her) – and we went to the Green Show – the highlight of her visit (my niece will see her first play later this week – now that she is six).

As a rotating repertory theater – we are able to see many plays (seven this year) in a short visit. And we are able to see actors multiple times – often in very different roles. And – having visited the festival for 20 years – we can see actors in many plays over the years. Of course not every actor comes back year after year – but there are many who do – sometimes with a gap in years.

Last night, Derrick Lee Weeden played Prospero. He can disappear on stage when appropriate – but he is at his best in a big role like Prospero where he is meant to command the stage whenever he is on it. His voice can boom, or draw you in to a conspiratorial moment. And every word is there – clear – meaningful. And this performance was not his Othelo, or Coriolanus, Harold Looomis in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (perhaps the first time I saw him here – 14 years ago).

Another notable performance last night was Dan Donohoe as Caliban – under his make-up and costume, it took awhile to convince myself it was him. He groveled and winced his way through the play – not at all his Hal from Henry IV, Part One and Two, or certainly not his incredible Dvornichek from Rough Crossing. But brilliant.

Four more days (plus the drive home) to enjoy with four generations of our family – about seventeen of us in all. Food, plays, talk. Talk about food, talk about plays, and just talk.